


Produce

by JoAsakura



Series: Refuse/Refuge [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Grocery stores are uncomfortable places, M/M, that dent in the jeep is the size of someone's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8521177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: Jack goes shopping, Gabriel faces off with a coworker.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, no wierd sex in this one. Just plot.

In retrospect, Jack thought as he handled the avocado more than was strictly necessary, he should have just let Gabriel do this.

He dropped the fruit in his little basket and slouched a little further down in the slightly-too big shirt as a woman passed by, cart squeaking loudly and one wheel thumping in rhythm as it's flat spot smacked against the tiled floor. The store was brightly lit, cheerful music playing over the low, white noise of conversations and the refrigerators.

The smell from the fish department made his stomach twist and he could hear the lights hum overhead. A child shrieked in the cereal aisle and a businessman in a rumpled suit chattered on his phone as he pawed through the precut cheese.

Jack fought down the urge to run.

(Glasses, beard, clothes that fit just badly enough to hide the span of his shoulders. Just enough to be invisible.) He tugged the baseball hat down just a little further and focused on the bagged salads. SEP had removed their fingerprints and Jack's rear teeth had grown back in crooked after his skull had healed, just enough to change his overall dentition. (Jack Morrison, if he ever actually existed, is dead. No one is looking for him in a Trader Joe's in New Mexico. Jake King, on the other hand, has to buy groceries because his fucking smoke monster soul eating husband won't let him buy more vodka unless he actually buys food to go with it) He thought, dropping a bag of baby kale into basket.

 _Baby kale_. He almost burst out laughing at the sheer absurdity of it. He'd been eating out of a trashcan less than a week ago.

Gabe had wanted him to hang it up. Lay low at the safehouse, grow tomatoes and do... This. Act like someone who hadn't spent the last thirty years as a war machine and occasional international celebrity.

Jack had noted twenty four cameras on his way in and had almost crushed a cantaloupe while trying to figure out escape routes and things he could improvise as a weapon if he had to.

(Against what, Jack?) He tried not to scowl at the small child sitting in a nearby cart. (A bunch of underpaid grocery workers and shoppers looking to buy organic fair trade tuna testicles?)

He stuffed another bag of kale in the basket. It would at least shut Gabriel up about his eating habits.

~~

At the far end of the parking lot, Gabriel leaned against the deeply-dented fender of an old Jeep and exhaled a cloud of smoke that was more nanomachine waste than actual tobacco. He stared at the store and tapped off the ash from his cigarette.

Jack had been in the grocery for fifteen minutes and so far nothing had caught on fire, no alarms had gone off and as far as he could tell, no one was running out screaming. He hoped that was a good sign.

  
It was twilight, and the light posts hummed and sputtered as they slowly came on. The air had a faint chill to it, a stillness.

He took another drag with his nominal lungs and then wheeled, shotgun spinning out of his mass, and trained it on the petite, purple-clad woman beside him. "Sombra."

"I gotta say, Reaper, I took you for more a Whole Foods kinda guy, myself." She said, perching on the hood of the Jeep. When Gabriel didn't put the gun away, she reached over and pushed it aside. "Come on, man. Point your boomstick somewhere else."

"What do you want, Sombra?" Gabriel blew out another cloud of smoke, letting the gun fall, but not dissolving it.

"You know, you find the most interesting stuff in stores sometimes." She laughed and spun a screen between her fingers. Gabriel watched as an older man in a flannel shirt examined an avocado. "Clothes and beard. Glasses. All designed to just slightly distort his body and face shape. You cute old black ops guys and your lo-fi tricks." Sombra grinned and her gloves sparkled in the dimming light. "He's good, knows where all the cameras are, keeps his face out of direct line of sight. But. You know, these modern grocery stores? Everything is SO SHINY."

Sombra turned a screen around and Gabriel saw Jack's reflection on a shiny metal endcap. "If I didn't know any better, I'd guess you were here grocery shopping with a dead man. A dead man you were supposed to bring back home like a good little retriever."

"What. Do. You. Want." Gabriel repeated slowly, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out on the pavement.

"I think it would be useful to have a favor from you, Reaper. One I can call in at any time? I like having useful friends." She leaned forward, the image still between them.

"No." Gabriel let the gun vanish and folded his arms.

"Wait, what?" Sombra straightened, brows knitting in a heavy scowl. "You want me to tell the bosses that you're playing house with a target?"

"You're not going to." Gabriel snorted. "I recon'ed Volskaya Industries before we went in after the boss lady."

"You bugged her office." Sombra's eyes widened. "You bastard, you got in there before me. But I scanned for digital intrusion and..."

"I'm sure the bosses would be equally interested in the little side hustle you have going on with Katya Volskaya." Gabriel shrugged. "You know, us cute old black ops guys and our lo-fi tricks."

"Well played, Grandpa." Sombra slid off the hood of the Jeep and peered up at him. "I get the feeling that's not all you have up your smoky sleeve, though."

She paused and looked around him as an older man in flannel came out of the store.

"No, but that's all you need to know for now." Gabriel leaned in to her. "And on the off chance there's a dead man in there? I think you might owe him one anyways."

The man across the lot paused, then went to another car and Sombra sagged a little, glaring up at Gabriel. "You know." She said softly.

"I imagine Alejandra couldn't wait to tell you how she got saved by a real life superhero." Gabriel straightened.

"What do you want, then, Reaper?" Sombra folded her arms as she watched the man struggle with opening the car door, and then drop his groceries, her frown deepening as she brought up the screens from the store.

"I don't give a shit about whatever else you have going on, and I'd like to keep it that way." Gabriel smiled and showed far too many teeth, his eyes lighting red in the gloom. A dark fog began to roll in around them and Sombra nodded thoughtfully.

"Fair enough." Sombra folded the screens away as the car pulled out of the spot. "Maybe I didn't see who I thought I did anyways. No sense in making baseless assumptions. " She laughed again, a little softer, then reached up and tapped her finger on Gabriel's nose. "Watch your back, grandpa. I don't have that many friends left." She grinned, then vanished in a flicker of tactical cloak.

~~

Several hours and many extra turns later, Gabriel pulled up to the cabin to see warm light spilling out of the kitchen window.

"Where's the car you stole?" He asked, sliding into the little kitchen while Jack shredded some kale.

"Abandoned off the interstate with a big white flag on it. I walked the rest of the way overland." Jack turned. "We compromised? I caught sight of your little friend while I was checking out. Figured I should try and give you some plausible deniability."

"I think we're good for now." Gabriel sagged against Jack's back, black smoke swarming around them both. "Thank you for not engaging." He muttered into Jack's hair. "Nice touch dropping all the groceries." He snorted. "Really sold the 'I'm not a super soldier' thing."

"Yeah, you try quietly ripping the door handle off a Subaru while carrying a bunch of stuff." Jack elbowed him, fishing out a card for a hunting store he'd clearly torn off a corkboard. "By the way, I found a place where I can get some tactical stuff to fix my gear, so you can quit whining about me not wearing enough armour." He offered Gabriel a leaf over his shoulder, and it vanished into a black tendril. "Dealing with Talon's shit's got to be less stressful than grocery shopping."

 


End file.
